Tom Moloughney
reports that BMW is planning to launch a limited edition “Electronaut Edition” i3. Here is the report from Tom’s
ActiveEMobility blog.
“So yesterday we had the East Coast Electronaut meet at
BMW’s North American headquarters in Woodcliff Lake, NJ. After taking turns
driving i3?s and getting a tour of the battery tech department and even getting
to see a real i3 battery back opened up, we had a question and answer session
with Jacob Harb, manager of electric
vehicle sales and service for BMW NA. It didn’t take long for the topic of
the special Electronaut Edition to come up.
We still didn’t get much details, but were told it’s not
just going to be stickers and a chrome badge, that the car will indeed have
special equipment that isn’t available on any other i3. Then Jacob asked us
what we would think about it being available is a special color combination
that isn’t available to regular buyers and he threw out white with BMW i Blue
accents. That surprised me a bit because that is one of the regular i3 color
combos. I later asked a program manager about that and was told the white i3
will not be available in the US like it is in Europe, for at least the first
year! So white would actually be an exclusive color here. Still, I’m not going
for that. I don’t really like the i3 in White and I’ll have to pass on the
Electronaut Edition if it only comes in white which is what Jacob was implying.
However they weren’t saying that this is etched in stone.
BMW was just trying to take our temperature on the subject of color. Personally
I don’t think they can mandate any one particular color for the Electronaut
Edition. No matter what color they choose they will get a minority approval.
BMW will have to let us pick the color or at the very least offer three
exterior color choices for this special edition. My favorite i3 color is Laurel
Gray with the BMW i Blue trim. I like how it lessens the two-tone color scheme
that stands out on all the other i3?s. plus, if they really want to offer us a
special color, they should use the Protonic Blue offered on the i8 or grab a unique
color from the ///M division. The white with a black hood and roof looks too
much like a Panda bear for me and in fact we joke about that in the i3 Facebook
group all the time.
I definitely appreciate that BMW is making the effort to
make us feel special, and as a group we all think that’s a great gesture.
However I just hope they get it right. Obviously nothing short of giving us
free cars is going to please everybody – and even then some will probably say
they should have given us i8?s! So I’ll offer three different ideas that they
could do that would be pretty cool”.
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